Subsides for optimization of transfer of radioactive liquid waste from 99MO production plant to the waste treatment facility

The increasing need for radioisotopes lead Brazil to consider the domestic production of 99Mo from fission of low enriched uranium targets. In order to meet the present demand of 99mTc generators the planned 'end of irradiation' activity of 99Mo is about 170 TBq per week. The radioactive waste from the production plant will be transferred to a waste treatment facility at the same site. The total activity of the actinides, fission and activation products present in the waste were predicted based on the fission yield and activation data for the irradiation conditions, such as composition and mass of uranium targets, irradiation time, neutron flux, production process and schedule, already established by the project management. The transfer of the waste from the production plant to the treatment facility will be done by means of special shielded packages. In the present study, the commercially available code Scale 6.0 was used to simulate the irradiation of the targets and the decay of radioactive products, assuming that an alkaline dissolution process would be performed on the targets before the removal and purification of 99Mo. The assessment of the shielding required for the packages containing liquid waste was done using MicroShield 9 code. The results presented here are part of a project that aims at contributing to the design of the waste management system for the 99Mo production facility. (author)